March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Two cases of Ebola were confirmed
in Liberia as the death toll from Guinea’s outbreak, called
“unprecedented” by an international aid organization, climbed
to 80.

One of the confirmed cases in Liberia has died, while a
second person who died with a suspected Ebola infection tested
negative for the virus, the World Health Organization said in a
statement. Both confirmed cases in Liberia were exposed to Ebola
in Guinea, Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, said on Twitter.

The outbreak is the worst in seven years, and the first in
Guinea, which has 122 suspected or confirmed cases and 80
deaths, the WHO said today. The distribution of cases in
different areas of the West African nation, from villages in the
country’s south to the coastal capital of Conakry, makes the
outbreak unlike any other, according to Doctors Without Borders.

“We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before
seen in terms of the distribution of cases,” Mariano Lugli,
coordinator of the organization’s project in Conakry, said today
in a statement. “This geographical spread is worrisome because
it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organizations
working to control the epidemic.”

Monkeys, Bats

The government has asked people not to eat monkeys,
chimpanzees and bats and to avoid travel in the affected areas,
while Senegal closed its border with Guinea. Guinean President
Alpha Conde called for calm.

The country is taking steps to “fight this epidemic
effectively,” Conde said in a broadcast on state-run Radio
Television Guineenne yesterday.

The Economic Community of West African States expressed
“deep concern” over the outbreak and asked for international
help in combating the “serious threat” it poses to regional
security. The WHO doesn’t recommend any restrictions on travel
to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone because of the outbreak.

The Guinean towns of Gueckedou and Macenta, near the border
with Liberia, have been hardest hit, with 55 and 14 deaths
respectively, according to Guinea’s health ministry. There are
11 confirmed cases in the capital Conakry, and three deaths,
Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman, said today by phone from
Guinea.

The virus, first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in
what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is transmitted
to people through the blood and other secretions of wild animals
such as chimpanzees, gorillas, bats and porcupines, according to
the WHO. Humans transmit the virus to each other through contact
with blood and other body fluids.

All the outbreaks in the past decade have been in Congo,
the neighboring country of the Republic of Congo, and Uganda,
with the exception of one outbreak in Sudan in 2004.